When we think about local sourcing, we tend to think about farm-to-table cuisine at a restaurant or local supply chains feeding a manufacturing company. Indeed, sourcing inputs and ingredients from your own backyard provides benefits to companies across many industries. But what about the talent supply chain? That’s where Novelis has mastered the art of local sourcing.

Over the past 10 years, the state of Georgia has aggressively invested in linking public education with the needs of industry by creating a statewide network of 46 College and Career Academies, while significantly expanding dual enrollment, industry apprenticeships, and post-secondary opportunities for high school students. These opportunities allow students to obtain industry credentials for quality, in-demand jobs that meet the needs of each community’s workforce.

Chambers of Commerce across the country have a unique challenge - to protect and promote the local business community and support their needs as they face the nation's workforce challenges. The New Braunfels Chamber in Texas reflects on what worked for them over the past year of actively working to build a community system that would solve for some of those challenges and gives us four lessons learned in the progress.

Like many countries around the world, the United States faces a shortage of highly-skilled science and technology workers. In the past decade, employment growth in STEM occupations has markedly outpaced growth in non-STEM occupations, and while there will be an estimated 3.4 million STEM jobs available between 2015 to 2025, only about 1.4 million workers will be qualified to fill them, according to a study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute. ExxonMobil is taking this challenge head on – but it’s not doing so alone.

A yet to be released report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation STEM Scholars program reveals student knowledge gains, behaviors, and attitudinal changes across the country. The findings provide an analysis of data from more than 4,000 students in 27 schools across Michigan, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Texas. Overall, findings suggest that connecting students’ personal interests and strengths to STEM skills helps students better see themselves in STEM.

In order to stay globally competitive, Houston’s industries needed to attract, train, and hire workers into technical careers that require more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree. To address the skills gap, Greater Houston Partnership— a group of 1,200 companies in the 11 county Houston region—took on the responsibility of retraining workers and strengthening the talent pipeline.

What do you love to do? It’s a question that drives career planning nationwide. That seemingly harmless probe is the assumption behind interest-only assessments, which have historically dominated career guidance efforts. However, these assessments are failing employers and students. What would happen if you measured that person's aptitude?

The need for quality talent is so great that those who excel at unlearning, learning, and reinventing themselves have a higher probability of success for overcoming common biases including race, gender, age, and academic background. Finding employees and candidates who have the ability and initiative to constantly reinvent themselves is the goal of every company today, though it isn’t easy.

Congress last week passed and the president today signed legislation reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which provides important funding for programs focused on the academic, career, and technical skills development for high school and higher education students. Highlights of the reauthorization include new opportunities for partnerships between employers and educators to improve student preparation for in-demand jobs, measures that improve alignment with other workforce development programs, and increased program accountability.

For hiring managers to attract top talent, they must view the aging workforce through a new lens. Today, we consider those 65+ to be “older” and less skilled or capable. But we must shift our perspective on age. The average life expectancy for a man is 80 years old, and for a woman the average is 85 years. A 50-year-old is no longer a “senior.”